The town still boasts relics of the rubber
boom era. On the main plaza stands a won
drous two-story building of riveted iron
plates designed by Alexandre-Gustave Eif
fel, of Eiffel Tower renown. It was first dis
played at a Paris exposition in 1889. Later it
was dismantled and shipped here by a rub
ber baron.
The rubber boom collapsed before World
War I. Today the talk is of oil-sizable
reserves in the jungle near the Ecuadoran
border. Some strikes were made back in the
early 1970s, but drilling and exploration
came to a near standstill when the oil proved
of poor quality. Foreign companies gradu
ally pulled out; the cost of exploration in the
jungle is staggering. Completion of the pipe
line to the coast in 1977 and more discoveries
have begun a new boom that will help lubri
cate Peru's creaking economy.
Around Iquitos itself, the jungle has been
logged over for hundreds of miles. Primitive
Indians who dwell in that green vastness are
being rapidly assimilated. Many come from
deep in the jungle to Iquitos, bringing old
ways with them-including jungle magic.
I asked around, hoping to find a sorcerer.
I was told they use the bark of a jungle vine
to brew a hallucinogenic elixir called aya
huasca, under whose influence they cast
potent spells.
Two kinds of magicians use this elixir.
There is the brujo, caster of powerful spells,
capable of causing almost unimaginable
evil. No one I talked to knew of any brujos
though everyone seemed to know people
who suffered from their evil spells, which
are said to cause melancholy, impotence,
blindness, sickness, even death. A brujo's
victims, I was told, must seek out a curan
dero, or curer, who cannot create spells but
can, with the help of the ayahuasca elixir,
break the power of a brujo's spell.
Could I find a curandero in Iquitos?
Oh, no, people said, even the curanderos
are gone. But one taxi driver finally sug
gested someone.
"There is a man who works at the
slaughterhouse. Perhaps he can help you."
And that's how I met the maestro.
Gamble becomes boom: Welding fuses a pipelinenear Andoas, after a 1978 oil
strike helped boost Peru's known reserves by almost 20 percent. When the state
first struck jungle oil in 1971, it urgedforeign companies to join the probe. All
failed except U. S.- owned OccidentalPetroleum, which persevered, making strikes
that allowed Peru to export a billion dollars' worth of oil last year.
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